Conservatives haven’t achieved anything to be proud about
By Albert Smith | Wed, 04/08/2009 - 22:51
It might be that the trend going on for decades regarding long immigration wait times have been reversed and prospective newcomers have their application processed at a rate twelve percent faster last year. But the fact is that there is nothing to be proud of as the wait times are still longer as compared to that in 2004.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s figures for 2008 showed that eighty percent of applications were processed in a period of less than 33 months, which was an improvement by four months from the previous year. The government claims that due to the slow paced processing of applications, highly skilled and educated immigrants move away from Canada and prefer other destinations like Australia and US, and the reduction in wait times will attract migrants.
Critics however disagreed with the government that improvement in the processing time will make Canada more attractive as they believe that the modest dip in processing times won’t have any effect.
When compared to 2004, wait times still remain longer and business-class immigrants from some countries will still have to wait for over seven years to get a final decision on their application.
The improvement is in part due to the $109 million that helped hiring of visa workers, and also due to some administrative changes and legislative reforms.
For instance, some files in busy office in New Delhi are being processed in rather peaceful places like Poland and Warsaw.
All in all, what these improvements mean is that now Canada is processing old applications at a rate at which it is receiving new ones that add to the backlog. As Canadian immigration workers failed to keep pace with applications, wait times increased with every passing day and the backlog rose from only 40,000 in 1990s to over 900,000 now.
But there is no way that the opponents are impressed with the improvements and they have a series of rough patches to point towards in the reign of the Conservatives.
The processing times for applications of family members increased in 2008- it increased by twenty percent in case of dependent children and more than twenty five percent in case of spouses and partners.
Almost eighty percent of the spouses have their application processed in a period of eleven months, an increase by eight months in 2007; and applications of eighty percent of children are now processed in a period of one year, which is more than in 2007 by ten months.
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